He had a recurring dream. He was
dancing with a girl, and she was warm and soft, but he couldn't see
her face. Still, he felt comfortable when she held him, as if he was
in the only place where he truly belonged. She wore a formal dress,
which sometimes looked just like Morgan's gown from senior prom,
sometimes was a wedding dress, and other times faded away into the
same hazy dream vision that obscured her face, as well.

Music played, which was atonal and
was simultaneously comprised of the tinkling of delicate chimes, and
the heavy computerized beat of techno music. A sudden wind would
pick up, and tug at the billowing corners of the girl's dress. Her
skirt would swirl and rise in the wind, stretching and filling the
whole room, chocking him as it snaked down his throat, wrapped around
his neck, and pushed him away from that wonderful woman.

Whoever she was, she was ripped from
his arms far too suddenly, and he was left alone and scared and cold
as she spun away in the breeze, the distance between them growing
from a few inches to hundreds of miles in the blink of an eye. He
watched, screamed sometimes, as he saw her across the unimaginable
distance, her dress suddenly blood-red against a black sky, and her
face still indiscernible. All he knew was that they were meant to be
together, and if he let her slip away now, they'd never be back
together again.

He'd shout. Sometimes, it was a
name, but in the nature of dream language, the cry would echo against
itself so that he didn't even know what he'd pronounced once the
words came from his mouth. He was certain that she felt what he'd
felt, and that she needed to return to him just as much as he needed
to be near her.

Then, she would turn and walk away,
as if she cared nothing for what they'd shared.

At this point, every night, Darren
would wake up, his sheets soaked with sweat, and his heart racing.
He'd always think a few moments of the dream, wondering how it had
terrified him so utterly. True, the sense of loneliness had been
devastating, but the dream wasn't a nightmare in the truest sense
of the term.

At first, thanks to the dreams,
Darren had tried to ignore them, roll over, and go back to sleep.
Eventually, though, he noticed that he awoke at the same time every
morning: 4:22. He didn't know it for sure, but Darren liked to
imagine that this was the exact hour that Gwen had been killed.
Maybe her ghost spoke to him through the dream, trying to apologize
for her absence, and help him come to terms with her inability to
return from the dead.

He came to recognize that he never
fell asleep after waking up from the dream. He'd tried to adapt by
going to bed earlier in order to compensate for the loss of sleep,
but the dorms were too noisy at nine o'clock at night for him to
fall into a deep sleep before it was so late, he knew he'd wake in
an hour or two anyway. Some early mornings, he tried to catch up on
his homework after the nightmare woke up, but Darren worried that he
annoyed his roommate too much.

Eventually, he'd taken to sleeping
at home. It didn't make the nightmares any better, and the cost of
gas was prohibitive as he tried to drive back to his classes four
times a week. At least he had peace and quiet in his old room,
though.

He still suffered from the
nightmares, and there was only so much time he could fill with
homework during the endless pre-dawn hours. Finally, Darren
discovered the only way he could achieve peace after the terror of
those nights.

He walked into the bathroom and
splashed some cold water onto his face. He didn't really need to;
he felt very wakeful anyway, but it was just a good routine for after
waking up. Darren got dressed, shaved, and grabbed his car keys from
the kitchen counter before stepping outside, making sure to close the
front door quietly so as not to wake his parents.

The drive from Darren's house to
the graveyard took less than ten minutes, and over the past few
weeks, it had become so habitual that he didn't even need to think
about where he was going. He held the steering wheel with one hand
while he searched for a good radio station with the other. After a
few unsuccessful minutes of searching for music, he just turned the
radio off, and left himself with his own silence.

At this time of night, the
graveyard's parking lot was completely empty. Even so, Darren
passed it, knowing he could find a closer spot. There was an old
dirt road that stretched down the yard, weaving through tombstones
and snaking around mausoleums. It swung right past Gwen's grave
toward the outskirts of the graveyard. The town was three hundred
years old, and relatively speaking, Gwen's three-month-old plot was
practically brand new.

Darren parked, turned on his warning
lights, and climbed out of his idling car. Gwen's gravesite had
become so familiar that Darren barely needed to watch where he was
going anymore. He'd memorized that spot on the ground where an
invisible root threatened to trip an unwary passer-by, or where
slippery moss could trip him.

He knelt on Gwen's grave, just
before the tombstone, folded his hands, and bowed his head. Darren
wasn't praying. He'd never been particularly religious. What he
did was more like meditation, as he considered his life with Gwen,
and the mess it had become now.

Although it felt a bit like
treachery, he couldn't always believe that his life was for the
worse without her. Darren couldn't help but feel that for the past
four years, he'd been drowning. Everything that made him unique
had been swallowed up by Morgan, then by Gwen. He'd been so lost
in his girlfriends, Darren had forgotten to be himself.

Now, despite the sleepless nights,
and the classes he missed because of the long trips home, and the
hours wasted in graveyards, Darren felt like he finally was living
his own life. For the first time in years, Darren had the time and
space to discover who he was as a person, and who he could be.

In many ways, it was a relief. As
Darren rose to his feet to return home, he reminded himself of the
same conclusion he reached every morning. This was a good thing.

The end.

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